The epidemic Australia is failing to control – Sydney Morning Herald

Often the inspiration for the education reforms in Australia are imported from the US and Britain. Yet, the evidence base to support many of these grand policy changes here is weak or non-existent. For instance, research shows that market-based models of school choice, test-based accountability, and privatisation of public education have been wrong strategies for world-class education elsewhere. Yet, market models have been the cornerstone of Australian school policies since the early 2000s.

So, what should we do instead? Success in fighting the ongoing health pandemic is a result of systematically relying on the best available science and expert knowledge to maximise the effectiveness of treatments while minimising their side effects. We should follow that same principle in education, too.

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Evidence-based education policies use research to link selected treatment and expected outcomes, but they almost always ignore possible harmful side effects they may have on schools, teachers or children. Take NAPLAN, for example. Those who advocate the necessity of national standardised testing regimes back their views by positive consequences of high-stakes testing while ignoring the associated risks that research has exposed: narrowing curriculum, teaching to the tests, and declining student motivation, just to mention some.

Education and health are important contributors to a better life. During the coronavirus pandemic, we have seen what evidence-based public health policies look like. But unlike medicine, education operates on the basis of ideology, politics and consensus. We see the inconvenient consequences of that in national statistics and international education indicators.

In early December, Australia’s plans of having a homegrown COVID-19 vaccine were ruined when the University of Queensland research team found that participants in phase 1 trials tested weakly positive on HIV tests. These detected side effects made Prime Minister Morrison terminate a $1 billion deal with the UQ and look for safer options to treat the coronavirus pandemic.

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If education was like medicine, many controversial education policies, including NAPLAN, MySchool and school funding models, would have been terminated during trial phases due to harm they do to teaching and learning.

If we have learnt anything in 2020, it is that we need to learn to act in education more like we act in medicine. We should stop claiming that there is an extensive evidence base behind suggested educational treatments like the School Success Model without being sure about their possible side effects to children’s learning.

More importantly, it is unfair to expect schools to base their pedagogical decisions on solid evidence unless the policies behind these expectations are based on best available science and professional practice.

Pasi Sahlberg, a Finnish educator, is a professor of education policy at the Gonski Institute for Education, UNSW Sydney.